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Sunday, June 24, 2018

Bats And Balls

Humorist P. J. O’Rourke has called liberalism “the philosophy of sniveling brats.” No doubt he had in mind the gimme mentality that’s prevalent among them, married to their tendency to whine, stamp their feet, and shout “It’s not fair!” when they don’t get whatever they’re currently demanding: “If you don’t give me what I want, I’m going to take my bat and ball and go home.” And indeed, that was an adequate characterization for the Eighties and Nineties: arguably as accurate as any precis of a “philosophy of governance” that has no intellectual underpinnings could be.

This is a phenomenon we have seen repeatedly over the last year and a half. Liberals try to rule any support for President Trump out of bounds. Anyone who expresses even the mildest support for Trump is read out of polite society. He is shunned; he should be fired from his job; if he writes anything, it shouldn’t be printed; he is publicly denounced and inundated with hate; his home, in some instances, is besieged and his children terrorized. If he ventures out into public, he is harassed by bullies. This is the essence of 21st century liberalism.

And it is evil. It is incompatible with democracy or any kind of civil society. And, above all, it is completely crazy. After all, Donald Trump won the election. Donald Trump is the President of the United States. Liberals are trying to dictate, through mob rule and control over the press, that any support for the President of the United States is unacceptable and, if at all possible, career ending.

John Hinderaker calls this “crazy and evil.” I concur on the “evil” portion, but I can’t see the Left’s behavior as “crazy.” It’s steadily getting them at least some of the things they want: concurrence from a good part of their “base,” obeisance from the major media, and a scattering of conciliatory gestures from the GOP, especially the “NeverTrump” portion thereof. As the old Army saying goes, “If it’s crazy and it works, it ain’t crazy.”

It’s becoming a nation where an elite that is certain of its power and its moral rightness is waging a cultural war on a despised minority. Except it’s not actually a minority – it only seems that way because it is marginalized by the coastal elitist liberals who run the mainstream media.

Today in America, we have a liberal president refuses to recognize the majority sent to Congress as a reaction to his progressive failures, and who uses extra-Constitutional means like executive orders to stifle the voice of his opponents. We have a liberal establishment on a secular jihad against people who dare place their conscience ahead of progressive dogma. And we have two different sets of laws, one for the little people and one for liberals like Lois Lerner, Al Sharpton and Hillary Clinton, who can blatantly commit federal crimes and walk away scot free and smirking.

Today in America, a despised minority that is really no minority is the target of an establishment that considers this minority unworthy of respect, unworthy of rights, and unworthy of having a say in the direction of this country. It’s an establishment that has one law for itself, and another for its enemies. It’s an establishment that inflicts an ever-increasing series of petty humiliations on its opponents and considers this all hilarious.

That’s a recipe for disaster. You cannot expect to change the status quo for yourself and then expect those you victimize not to play by the new rules you have created. You cannot expect to be able to discard the rule of law in favor of the rule of force and have those you target not respond in kind.

Kurt Schlichter wrote the above in April of 2015. He foresaw a swifter and more dramatic response from the Right than has emerged to this point. I don’t think we’ll have to wait much longer.

Leftists believe that they can get away with these “one rule for me, another for you” tactics indefinitely. They believe it because up to now they’ve garnered the results they’ve sought, at least in part, with a perceptible shortage of consequences unfavorable to them. That’s about to change. Gatherings of conservatives, free-speech rallies, and talks by Rightist and nationalist luminaries are being equipped with security -- armed security. Police forces in left-wing-governed cities are being put on notice that if they don’t maintain public order under those circumstances, it will be done for them, and be damned to the consequences.

I didn’t want to live long enough to see the blood of Americans running in the gutters. It appears I’ll have no choice.

In the past, political demonstrations in Germany led to violence and death fairly often in the late 20's and early 30's prior to the ascension of Hitler to power. You could describe those days as a soft civil war as well with a political movement rising against the established government.

Maybe this is how our nation will descend into a civil war. If the left does raise the bar to such a level that violence is commonplace there is little left as far as civil discourse.

It seems that there are two or more separate strategies in play at present.

There is the legislative conversation if you can call it that along with the constant propaganda from the media as well as the violent leftist extremists who seek out peaceful individuals who represent the opposing party and attack them verbally bullying them in an attempt to provoke a physical reaction. So far they have succeeded in driving the opposition from the field.

If this trend of increasing vitriol and petty vengeance continues it will not be long before tempers will flare and then it will be game on.

When the violence begins in the streets it will be very telling to see how the politicians and media react.